Spain: First trial in Franco-era ‘stolen babies’ scandal comes to court

Eduardo Vela, 85, a former gynaecologist at a clinic in Madrid, is accused of having taken Ines Madrigal, now 49, from her mother in 1969 and giving her to another woman who raised her and is falsely certified as being her biological mother.

Ms Madrigal told reporters: “In this country, a person who played God – changing people’s parentage, faking birth certificates like in my case and negating the right to know one’s origins – cannot remain unpunished.”

She said she hoped the trial would open “thousands of cases that are closed” even if she never discovered who her real mother was.

Activists claim there are around 2,000 similar cases from General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, between 1939 and 1975, that have not made it to court because of a lack of evidence or because the actions have become time-barred.

The newborns of left-wing opponents of the regime and those of unmarried and poor couples were taken from them and adopted.

New mothers were told their babies had died suddenly and that the hospital had dealt with the burial when in fact they had been given away – or even sold – to other families.

The practice was expanded to take babies from poor families and evolved into an illegal trafficking network until at least 1987 when a new law was introduced to regulate adoption.